These are special times for visual learning. Spurred by dramatic advances in digital technology, the use of video as an instructional tool is finally coming into its own as a mainstream feature of American education.

Today's expanding access to top-drawer visual material has the ability to reinvigorate much of what goes on in our schools, advocates of video in the classroom say--prompting teachers to take a fresh look at what they teach, how they teach, and how their students learn.

And as high-tech video begins to transform and enrich instruction from coast to coast, it also is opening a promising new chapter in the professional development of teachers and fostering closer working relationships between state education agencies and public television networks.

Leaders in education and technology can barely contain their enthusiasm over such developments. The excitement reflects what Niki Davis, director of the Center for Technology in Learning & Teaching at Iowa State University, calls a "new energy" in education these days, as administrators and teachers increasingly come to recognize that technological breakthroughs have made longstanding goals for visual learning much more attainable than was previously possible.

Davis stresses that educators should look beyond the tech side of things, as fascinating as that can be, because what matters most is what they are able to do because of the technology. Down the road, she says, teachers and administrators might well look back at the current period and conclude: That was when education truly changed.

The growing use of video in schools, along with the spread of online learning in general, is not simply prompting teachers to "pick up the technology," Davis explains; it's actually beginning to change how teachers teach. "Once you use technology, the pedagogy changes," she says. "It's saying to teachers, ‘Think about the technology and, while you're doing that, think again about what it is you're trying to teach--the content--and how you're trying to teach it.'"

Michael Simonson, a professor in instructional technology and distance education at Nova Southeastern University, agrees. The main point to remember about visual learning, Simonson maintains, is that it can affect the substance of education.

"The curriculum is the key--not the media," he says. "We've fallen into this trap of considering that the use of technology is going to be an automatic silver bullet that's going to make kids learn more, be more motivated. But we forget that it's not the technology, not the media. It's the content, and it's the way those media are used. In other words, it's the pedagogy, it's the message, it's the design--it's the approach--that is the critical element."

To be sure, the conventional wisdom of 10, 20, or even 50 years ago about visual learning still holds: Most of us--students included--tend to learn and remember much more effectively when we can see and hear well-crafted videos on a given topic than when we can't.